DOS HERMANOS GO SPAIN: A BIT OF A MOUTHFUL

Try swilling some expectorant and then coughing it all up and you'll get close to the pronunciaion of Jaén. It's the capital of the province of the same (cough) name and apart from a few a adventurous Brits of a certain age (Ay-Thang-Yew) is untroubled by the tourist hordes.

As the guidebooks suggests it's a case of "move along now, nothing to see here". Which is a shame really because it's a decent size city (100,000+) with, if not the urgent nightlife of a Granada plenty of decent bars and places to eat in. There's also enough to occupy the more culturally minded for a while with a great hulk of a cathedral, a strategically located castle (take a taxi) and an old town to get pleasantly lost in. The latter includes some incredibly preserved Moorish baths which are well worth a peek.

As the centre of Spain's Olive Oil producing region I found plenty of the stuff adorning my food but whether it was just the wrong time of year or I didn't visit the right places but I never found any of the game dishes that the province is also known for.

Incredibly, though, in yet another landlocked city I found terrific seafood. A big shout out then to El Pato Rojo, a place no bigger than my kitchen, which managed to get me stuffed with enough fantastic seafood for several lifetimes and whose staff were so very friendly and patient with a guiri like myself.

Actually, that's a ditto for the other bars in the town too which like those in Granada give free plates away with each drink and where I never had to use the phrase No hay segunda ? er, once. And by the end of my one night's stay I was saying its name perfectly although that might have been down to too many pacharans.